There's a different move, and the manufacturers making it are getting most of what they wanted from a replacement at a fraction of the risk: leave the ERP where it is, and add an intelligence layer on top.
Why is replacing manufacturing ERP software so risky?
Because the ERP isn't just software: it's where decades of your operating history lives, and everything in the building touches it. (An ERP, or enterprise resource planning system, is the central software that tracks parts, orders, inventory, costs, and customers.) A replacement means migrating that history, retraining everyone, rebuilding every integration and workaround, and running the business through the transition. ERP replacement projects are notorious for overruns and unmet objectives, and at mid-market scale there's rarely slack to absorb a bad one.
The frustrations driving the urge to replace, meanwhile, are usually not about what the ERP stores. They're about what it can't do: answer questions in plain language, connect to the CRM and the shared drive, surface what matters without a report request.
What does an AI layer on top of your ERP do?
It adds the capabilities you wanted from a replacement without touching the system of record. The layer connects to your ERP and the systems around it (CRM, SharePoint, spreadsheets, CAD metadata) and makes all of it searchable and answerable in one place, in plain English. The ERP keeps doing what it does well: being the authoritative record. The layer does what the ERP never could: think across everything at once.
No migration, because the data stays where it is. No retraining the company on a new system of record, because the system of record didn't change.
Will it work with the ERP you actually run?
Almost certainly, including the old one. Annora layers on top of Epicor, Infor, NetSuite, Fishbowl, and others, cloud or on-premises. That includes legacy on-prem databases that are old and hard to get data out of, with awkward licensing and network requirements; connecting to exactly those systems is much of the point.
A practical compatibility checklist, in the order it comes up:
Your ERP. Which system and which version, cloud or on-prem. The surrounding tools. CRM, file shares, spreadsheets, CAD metadata; the layer is most useful when it spans all of them, not the ERP alone. Legacy databases. Older systems with restrictive licensing still connect. Hosting. The layer deploys in your environment: your own servers, AWS, Azure, or private cloud, so your data stays in your building.
Bring those four answers to a first call and fit gets confirmed quickly.
When does replacing the ERP still make sense?
When the system of record itself is failing: corrupted data, an unsupported product, a business the ERP structurally can't represent. Those cases exist. But they're rarer than the frustration suggests. If your complaints are "I can't get answers out of it," "it doesn't talk to anything," and "only two people know how to use it," those are layer problems, not replacement problems, and a layer solves them in weeks rather than years, without betting the company on a migration.
A useful test: write down what you'd want from the new ERP. If most of the list is about access, answers, and connection rather than record-keeping, you don't need a new ERP.